This happened a few years ago, but I still wonder about this. I would love some expert opinions from the FFers on this forum.

My niece & I, who are about the same age (40's), were flying from Boston to Dublin on Air Lingus on AA FF tickets. This was on a 2-5-2 seater and we had 2 seats together on the side to ourselves. We'd had the reservations for about 3 months prior to the flight. We were happily settled in our seats, having just met up in Boston from other flights and we were looking forward to catching up and spending a couple of weeks in Scotland. Then this man comes up to us and tells my niece who had the aisle seat that she was in his seat. We showed him our tickets, he went away and came back with a flight attendant who asked my niece to move. (The only open seat was a #2 inside seat in the 5 seat group). We told the flight attendant we were travelling together and didn't want to be split up. The guy had been acting huffy all along and told the flight attendent in an exasperated way to "forget about it" and he left.

Then just as the plane was about to take off, the flight attendant came back and told us both to move. The man had gotten the stranger sitting next to him in the 5 seat section to move, so both of them were moving back to our seats and the flight attendant asked us to move up to the 5 seater part.

We said we didn't understand why we had to move and the flight attendant got a little snippy and said we had to move NOW as the plane had to take off.

We moved and were upset the entire flight. We both tried to forget it and go to sleep, but it didn't work. We were much less comfortable and felt a bit abused.

Throughout this whole thing we were trying to be pleasant about it. Nobody apologized to us or said anything.

Why did we have to move? Was it because we were on free tickets? Because we were women? Three people had to move to accomodate this man. He was tall and I understand that the 2nd seat in a 5 seat section is not the most comfortable seat. But we aren't exactly short - my niece is 5 10.

Any opinions why we had to move and what we could have done, if anything, would be appreciated. I did write to Air Lingus a while after that but their response was very vague and didn't answer any questions.

Thanks! (Sorry for the LONG post)